The odd couple: Can bioengineering protect nature?

A blind date between world-weary conservationists and starry-eyed synthetic biologists could be the start of a life-saving relationship

By Jessica Griggs

(Image&colon; Paul Wearing)

Would Like To Meet&colon; Someone with verve and youthful optimism; a risk-taker who believes they can change the world for the better. Me? A little jaded, I suppose. Age? Oh, I wouldn’t like to say, but old enough to have been burned a few times.

And so a blind date was arranged. Both parties were unsure what to expect yet sufficiently intrigued to show up. For a few days in April, a group of conservationists and a group of synthetic biologists sat down together for the first time at the University of Cambridge. The idea was to get to know each other a little better and see if techniques from synthetic biology could help solve some of the most intractable problems that conservationists have been wrestling with for decades.

It was a bold idea. You could hardly find two more ill-matched scientific disciplines. Synthetic biology is barely a decade old and driven by excited young people who believe they can literally re-engineer the world by creating new and improved life forms from tailor-made building blocks. Conservation is a mature field, facing huge problems and desperate for new ideas. “We are watching species disappear but we only know how to wring our hands, scream from the rooftops about how bad humans are, and make you put plastic booties on when you come visit these animals,” said independent conservationist and meeting organiser Kent Redford, to the synthetic biologists. “Perhaps you can help us figure out what to do.”

Could synthetic biology be the boost conservationists need, or are the two simply incompatible? To answer that question, first ...

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